A Massachusetts school district has announced new job openings for staff affinity group coordinators, a report released Thursday found.
The Newton Public Schools’ “Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” on March 27, 2025 allegedly announced the creation of new roles, including a “Staff of Color Affinity Group Coordinator” and a “LGBTQ+ Staff Affinity Group Coordinator,” according to a Parents Defending Education (PDE) dispatch first shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Affinity groups are created to segregate and divide district staff by their skin color and sexual orientation rather than bring them together,” Casey Ryan, investigative reporter for PDE, told the DCNF. “Considering that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits segregation in public education, it is highly illegal for the district to not only promote affinity groups but to hire staff to coordinate them throughout the schools. If Newton Public Schools truly believed in inclusivity, maybe that funding would be better used on the 35% of students in their elementary schools who cannot read at a proficient level.”
The district is looking to hire 12 total coordinators, two for each position in elementary, middle and high school. The job responsibilities include hosting monthly meetings for “Socializing/Community-Building,” “Managing microaggressions” and “Self-Care,” according to documents obtained by PDE. The documents specify that these meetings should be promoted to “[A]ll staff members of color.”
The positions also require staff to “host impromptu safe spaces in response to district, state, or national incidents,” the documents state.
The positions are supported by a grant provided by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). The “DESE Teacher Diversification Grant” is meant to “Develop an increased and robust pipeline of diverse and well-prepared educators and leaders,” according to DESE’s website.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) teacher grants thrived under the Biden administration, which spent at least $600 million on teacher training programs instructing educators “to take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities (e.g., racism)” and acknowledge “systemic forms of oppression and inequity, including racism, ableism, ‘gender-based’ discrimination, homophobia, and ageism.” The Trump administration has since tried to pull these grants, but a Biden-appointed district judge temporarily blocked the Department of Education’s (ED) actions, finding “no reasoned explanation.”
President Donald Trump has worked to root out divisive DEI initiatives and other radical topics from schools and federal agencies, signing several executive orders banning the federal funding of such topics, such as the day one order “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.” Since Trump took office, hundreds of documents outlining DEI practices have already been wiped from the education department’s website, several related teams have been dissolved and staff members have been placed on administrative leave and DEI trainings have been halted. The department also demanded recently that all schools immediately end any efforts to use “race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination” when making admission decisions or when administering any other program, warning that failure to comply will result in the loss of federal funding.
Newton Public Schools did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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